Thread by @SethAbramson

(🧵) Here it is: antisemitism on CNN, where we’re told the “million-dollar question” is why Jews allegedly have protection from cultural, political, economic and corporate institutions in ways Black Americans allegedly don’t.

It is a dark road to go down. cnn.com/2022/10/29/ent…

1/ I privately raised this issue with a very talented, national-award-nominated Black artist a couple weeks ago; I won’t name him, as he doesn’t want to be named, but I took issue with a writing of his in which he made the same claim we now see on CNN—a false and dangerous one.

2/ The obvious answer—and indeed the answer that’s *deliberately provoked* by the “million-dollar question” CNN is asking—is that Jews, who were slaughtered by the millions in living memory, have special protections because they control or fund major institutions on a wide scale.

3/ This is the same claim antisemites have made for centuries—a claim antisemites have used to justify genocidally murdering all Jews worldwide. And guess what: it’s *exactly what Kanye believes about Jews*, which is why his empire has fallen. Because it’s a false, dangerous lie.

4/ To hide its virulent antisemitism, this CNN article pulls a bait-and-switch, saying that since Kanye has faced repercussions for merely “offending” Jews, so why did he not face similar repercussions for “offending” Black Americans?

But that is *not* what happened. Not at all.

5/ My ancestors were chased out of Russia by homicidal, antisemitic maniacs in the infamous pogroms of last century.

So if you want an example of something that “merely” has the effect of “offending” me, I offer this NBC clip that no one was upset about:

6/ That clip is from my favorite TV show ever, COMMUNITY. I love the show; I love all those who appeared on it; I love Donald Glover’s post-COMMUNITY work.

Kanye didn’t *offend* Jews. He *hates* us. He’s obsessed with Hitler and antisemitic conspiracy theories and he *hates* us.

7/ Kanye doesn’t *hate* Black people—though he has stuck his finger in the eye of the Black community, per community leaders, many more times than even this CNN article details. I recall when Kanye wore a Confederate flag patch for the first time. We all thought it was a one-off.

8/ Kanye would not have lost everything for offending Jews. COMMUNITY lost *nothing*—it did not lose me as a fan, it did not lose me as a viewer, it did not lose me as someone who roots for all those involved in the project—when it offended me.

But Kanye is an rank *antisemite*.

9/ So if I ask CNN—as I asked this man I was speaking to before—what it is that undergirds this bait-and-switch, in which *hatred* of Jews is analogized to *offending* Black Americans as a way of implying *Jews control the levers of culture, business and politics*, I fear I know.

10/ Racism and antisemitism should be dealt with identically. If a white artist exhibits the hatred for Black Americans Kanye does for Jewish Americans we can and should compare the situations—because the response should be identical. But this CNN article is antisemitic b*llshit.

11/ This article knows exactly what it’s doing because (a) it’s implicitly making the same arguments it well knows antisemites do about Jews finding ways to get special protections others don’t—forget the Holocaust a moment—and (b) it’s *explicit* on this score at points. To wit:

12/ “Young said companies predominantly led by White executives, for example, often struggle to react to anti-Black sentiments [in a way they don’t to antisemitism].” So amidst a wave of antisemitic “Christian nationalism,” Christian execs just *particularly* love Jews? Uh, no.

13/ In the same way this CNN article uses the term “anti-Blackness” as a bait-and-switch—equating it to antisemitism because the words have the same prefix, while *knowing* it can’t call Kanye “racist” (the actual equivalent term to antisemitism)—it also plays with “White,” here.

14/ Though as a Jew growing up in rural Massachusetts in the 1980s I was routinely told I was *not* White, and while many in America still deem (falsely) Jews to be a race, here the term “White” is covering for the tem “Jewish”—as it’s not *Christian* execs being discussed here.

15/ Then the article slips on this score, showing its true face: “When a Black person says things about Black people, [“White” executives are] like, ‘Okay, what do we do? What do we do with that?’ It’s an easier sort of conversation and easier sort of path to consequence when...

16/ ...you start talking about people that you’re not a part of.”

If the “White” executives referred to above were *Christians*, and you’re comparing the situation imagined above to antisemitic comments, how are you saying Christian executives are “part of” the Jewish community?

17/ The answer is quite clear: the CNN source used here has the same view as Kanye, the same view as the man I spoke to privately ten days ago: all major institutions allegedly have Jews among their executive class, so they’re “part of” the group attacked when it’s antisemitism.

18/ I have always agreed with the progressive principle that says white people are the absolute worst and least qualified persons when it comes to identifying what racism looks like.

But that also means that *non-Jews* are really sh*t at identifying what antisemitism looks like.

19/ What I learned 10 days ago was that a person who might be comfortable (and quite fairly so) telling a white person what racism looks like will then sound exactly like a white person—without realizing it—in falsely claiming *they* (a non-Jew) know what antisemitism looks like.

20/ This country is across-the-board awful at identifying or understanding *either* racism or antisemitism, which is why an article like this—which falsely says America is super-attuned to antisemitism while (incredibly!) it’s spreading antisemitic tropes—can be published at CNN.

CONCLUSION/ Antisemitic attitudes are at a decades-long peak in the US. Basic antisemitic tropes are now part of core GOP rhetoric. Antisemitic killings are rising fast. Christian nationalism—which wants Jews out of government—is on the march. Now’s the *worst imaginable time*...

CONCLUSION2/ ...to be spreading what folks *must* understand is Earth’s *core antisemitic trope*: Jews have an advantage over other groups in business and culture because they control the institutions that direct and influence business and culture. That *is* Kanye’s antisemitism.

CONCLUSION3/ So if you’re reading this and you’re *not a Jew*, understand that what *we Jews* are the experts on is what *your* antisemitism looks like and what forms it takes. We don’t need to be lectured at by you on this.

And what I’ve described here is *antisemitism* at CNN.

PS/

PS2/ Another question is whether CNN has it exactly reversed: is it possible corporations wait to see how a community reacts when someone in the community misbehaves? The article says the Black community gave Kanye passes on anti-Blackness—did *that* drive the corporate response?

PS3/ I’ve no view on Black Americans’ response to Kanye; it’s not my place to judge it. What I’m asking is if it’s a further insult to imply Jewish execs didn’t care about Kanye’s anti-Blackness when maybe *all* execs look to the Black community for guidance in this sort of case?

PS4/ By comparison, execs of any background arguably have an easier time if a public figure expresses hatred for demographics to which they (the public figure) don’t themselves belong—that is a *clear* case in which you’d want to cut ties with the public figure for their bigotry.

PS5/ With Kanye, because of his talent, mental health issues, obvious genius, and enormous contribution to all art (and also the Black community specifically), perhaps any split response in the Black community to his anti-Blackness was related to a non-response from institutions?

PS6/ I don’t know the answer to that question—only that the article seems to indicate response in the Black community to Kanye’s anti-Blackness was complicated, while the response in the Jewish community to Kanye’s antisemitism obviously had no particular reason to be and wasn’t.

PS7/ As predicted, the gentile-splaining on this thread—that’s when a non-Jew condescendingly explains to a Jew why there was no antisemitism in the antisemitism—began immediately.